29 August, 2007

The Good: in the process of verifying that it was not a spamblog, somebody at Google/Blogger decided it was a "Blog of Note." This led to further good, as most commenters seemed to enjoy hearing something different from Iraq than the regular MSM spiel. It also gave me the opportunity to point them to some other embedded bloggers.

The Ugly: of course, the trolls came out of the woodwork.

I've been moderating comments from the beginning, for two reasons: 1) I didn't want Bob to deal with the distraction of getting into discussions with commenters while he was over there; 2) I was unsure as to what our clientele would end up being (I had visions of exactly what has happened).

If someone wants to disagree in a polite and rational manner, I'll happily put their comments through. But the following is the only stripe of disagreement we've gotten over there:

"his work is an attempt to bring out the positive things that are happening in Iraq".

Ah, so you are a shill for the zionist neo-kunts in Washington. Here is a place where you can get the real news about the 'positive' things happening in Iraq: [link to a baldly anti-semitic/aryan website].

And then there's this from the one person brave enough to leave his name/blog... an Indonesian and academic/author:

This blog is a joke. Heroes? You are not liberating Iraq, you are annexing it! Get out of Iraq.

Heh. Count on the academics to have a firm grasp of the situation. *rolling eyes*

UPDATE (8/30/07, 8:15 a.m.): Labeling Talking with Heroes a spamblog was obviously a lame attempt to suppress it. But it more than just failed to suppress us... Two days ago (prior to the Google/Blogger attention that resulted from a Blogger human verifying we weren't a spamblog) we had 12 visitors, after a one-day maximum of about 200 since we started. In the first eight hours today we've had over 2,000 (after 1300+ yesterday), and are popping up on sidebars in everything from comic fanblogs to mommyblogs to typical vanity blogs. I think the plan backfired... :D

Many commenters seem new to the idea of milblogs and embedded bloggers, so it's exciting to realize we're reaching into a new "market." And yes, I've got a "sticky" post at the top of the blog that not only explains what it is, but encourages people to check out a list of other Iraq embeds and leading milblogger Blackfive.